Oh, yes, I have the graphics on lowest (the game suggests higher - but all games suggest higher than is optimal for me, for some reason). There is a massive improvement, but it's still not as fast as it could be. Not as fast as it is here in Firefox, for example.

To give an example of what I meant in my last post: I have Homeworld 2, and the cursor is very very sluggish. It makes the game almost unplayable in multiplayer - I just can't react fast enough or accurately enough. Luckily, they have a command line thingy that you can add to the shortcut: -hardwarecursor. This makes my cursor act at the same speed as if I was just in MS Word or here in Firefox. It does not change the look or function of the game's cursor in any way. I was just wondering if we already have this in Hegemony, and if not, can it be implemented?

I'm afraid not. I've thought about it before, because there would be a couple other benefits to a hardware cursor, but there's also some disadvantages, and there always seems to be something more important to work on.

The way I understand it, software cursors are tied to the game's framerate, leading to possible poor response times for the mouse pointer. In a game which struggles a little on your computer then I can see the benefits of having a hardware cursor as it has the GPU draw the cursor sprite as an overlay independent of the game's graphics. It would make a potentially unplayable game playable.

Out of interest, what are the disadvantages of a hardware cursor? Incompatibility with certain graphics chips?

Off the top of my head: there's size and colour limitations (depending on which version of Windows you're using, IIRC), edge-panning wouldn't work as well (regardless of whether you've chosen manual or auto edge-panning), drag-panning (with the middle mouse button) would stop working once your cursor reaches the edge of the screen, and any operation where the cursor doesn't act like a normal cursor (rotating/zooming with the control key, using the context menu, etc...) would have some edge cases where they don't work as well if your cursor is near the edge of the screen. It also doesn't mesh well with gamepad controls, although not many people are clamoring for that.

The other benefits to a hardware cursor are the ability to allow the cursor to leave the window (most people with dual monitors wouldn't like that, but most people who play in a window would like it) and the ability to play with a stylus.